Varian splashed forward, throwing his arms out to either side. His left shoulder shrieked in protest, pain lancing up the side of his neck. "Leave them out of this, Matthews!"

The phantom hummed a sour note. "Tromus was once my name, actually."

"Tromus, whatever your name is, your quarrel is with me!"

"You poor, deluded boy," Tromus shook his head piteously. "If you wanted your friends to be spared, you wouldn't have allowed them to come down here with you. Had you come on your own, I might have spared them. Well, the guardsman, at least." His glowing eyes fell on Shay. "The girl, on the other hand, is most intriguing."

Martin, who had frozen in place, had enough sense to look hurt. "Of course, I'm not special enough," he grumbled.

"What do you mean?" Shay asked in a shaky voice. "What could you want with me?"

"You knew what I was the moment I opened the door." Tromus folded his arms inside the sleeves of his robe. "The recognition is mutual. That eye inside your head is priceless, to speak nothing of the tremendous amount of magic you hold. I could practically taste it once you reached the town border." He began to drift back and forth, as if pacing. "After a rather, shall we say, embarrassing debacle in the southern lands, my master was willing to give me another chance. I was instructed to 'set up shop' and apprehend the Lunar Celestial's chosen one. Imagine my surprise to find a scion of the Seven Sisters accompanying him."

"Who is your master?" Martin asked warily.

The phantom gave him a disappointed look. "I can see you're the dimwitted one, aren't you? It should be obvious who my master is."

"Zhan Tiri," Shay spoke the name, her accent clipping the syllables into bitter pieces. "How could you serve a demon?"

Tromus chuckled. "I could hardly expect someone with such moral rigidity to understand. True power requires a strength of will none of you possess."

"But you do?" Varian spat.

"I am here," Tromus extended his arms. "And I have won. Is that not proof enough? All this is just talk to ease your minds before I send you to your graves."

"But how could you have known we were coming?" Varian demanded.

"The Celestials are not the only ones who can see other 'lifetimes', boy," Tromus explained with surprising patience, "other possibilities, other outcomes to this game you've become a part of. No doubt you've been informed about them, yourself. It is why I was so pleasantly surprised by the presence of your homely little companion." He fixed his depthless eyes on Shay once more. "How curious that in every other lifetime that could have occurred, you do not live long enough to even be moved across the board. A shocking development, if I do say so myse –"

The phantom was cut off by an arrowhead flying through his face. The projectile connected with the stone behind him, the glass vial breaking, the compound igniting in the damp air. The explosion created a small crater in the wall, crumbling bits of rock falling into the pool below. The sound of it made Shay cry out, and Martin whipped his head about to see what had caused it.

It was Varian. He had already nocked another arrow to the string, fletching drawn to the anchor he measured at the corner of his grimacing mouth. His chest was heaving, his entire frame shuddering with emotion, and his eyes burned with fury. "Not another word," he sneered. "You hear me?" His anger outweighed the undiluted panic he felt; she wasn't supposed to hear, she wasn't supposed to know. He didn't dare look at her face, couldn't bear to learn what he might see there. He knew he would have to eventually, but not until he'd killed this apparition dead. He already knew his attempt had been mostly ineffective – the phantom's face was already reforming, green smoke swirling hazily until a mildly perturbed expression reappeared.

"That was rude," Tromus stated sourly. "But then, what else can I expect from a boy who imprisoned his own father in crystal?"

Varian couldn't help it: he shot again, another explosion that sent more debris cascading down. "SHUT UP!"

"Kid, you're going to bring this place down on top of us!" Martin barked, almost hysterical.

Through the dust, the phantom emerged, flashing forward in a green bolt of lightning. He halted in front of Varian's face, tapping his own temple. "I know these things, son of Quirin. It's in your mind, tangled in the thoughts inside your head. It burns there like a brand, practically painted on your face. I don't even need to rely on my master's foresight to see it. I'm very good at looking into minds, you see. There's an art to it, like brushing a paint stroke on a canvas."

"Enough of this!" Martin sloshed forward, resuming his fighting stance less than five feet away. Sweat had glazed his hair over his forehead, dripping down to his chin – a tell-tale sign of undiluted fear. "If you're going to try and kill us, then just get it over with already!"

Tromus billowed away, flashing a wicked smile at him. "So eager to die, Martin Edrick? When your mother lies sick in bed, fearful that she'll never see her son again? Your father working day and night, trying to feed your little sisters?" He gave one of his shoulders a feminine roll. "Your lovely girl, Bethany, who has already begun to eye sir Patrick Donnes?"

Martin's eyes bulged with hysteria. "You're a sodding liar!" he shouted. "She would never choose Patrick over me!"

"Well, at this rate, I suppose you'll never know…unless you give me the axe." Tromus began to loom towards Varian once more, and viridian flames began to blaze across his shoulders. The fire danced down atop the water, licking its way across the chamber. "Materials gifted from another realm, forged into a weapon that brought a nation to its knees. Give it, and if you do, I'll spare your little friends. I might even be generous and remove their memories of the entire ordeal. Young guard, it'll be like you never left your post! Little girl, it'll be like you never left your forest. And your father, dear boy…what makes you think my master cannot set him free for you, undo all the mistakes you've made? It will all vanish, as if it never were. The king would forget, the princess…you all would. All will be as it should be."

Varian felt his resolve flicker, just for an instant, at the notion that he might not have to travel across the sea to find what he needed. Could the path to his father's freedom be shortened so easily? But the waver dissipated as quickly as it had stirred; he knew a lie when he heard one. He'd spoken enough himself. He set his teeth with a biting retort, ready to give his answer.

But Shay spoke first, her voice colored with an almost hopeful note. "Really?" The word stunned Varian in place as easily as the approaching fire, dread turning the anger in his head to ice. The girl's arms remained buried in her cloak as she took a tentative step forward. "You would do that? Help me forget?"

"Shay, what are you doing?" Varian didn't dare move now; the flames were too close. "What are you doing?!"

A look of genuine surprise flickered across Tromus' eerie face. Then he smiled wickedly. "Yes, Shay Cainsdaughter," he beckoned, a hunger igniting in his ghostly gaze. "For you, there will be more. I can teach you things your mother never could. Reality warping, transfiguration, time dilation…so much potential, and I will help you realize it!"

"Stupid girl, don't listen to him!" Martin yelled.

Shay continued, her knees shuddering. She stood before the phantom and slid a hand out into the air. Tromus offered his own, his glowing eyes greedy and sparking with almost lustful anticipation. Varian screamed her name, barely able to watch the horror unfolding before him as Shay placed her fingers on the phantom's hazy palm.

Then her head suddenly lowered, and she started to chant:

Seven stars on high

Sing your melody

Tromus' expression stalled as the words reached him. Through his panic, Varian could make out the phantom's face – first confusion, then understanding, then pure shock. "What? No. No, no, no, NO!" He tried to wrench himself out of her grip, but Shay didn't even move. The flames in the chamber promptly extinguished, and a warning alarm went off in the one small, calm corner of Varian's brain. He didn't know what was going to happen; he acted purely on instinct, rushing forward – not towards Shay, but Martin. In hindsight, he was certain the Celestial was somehow guiding him, giving him impressions of what was about to occur. "Martin!" He grabbed the guard's arm and jerked him backwards with surprising strength. He dragged him behind the pedestal and plunged his hands through the water, calling with all his might for the one thing he knew could protect them. As he did, he heard Shay continue to sing in a voice that was no longer her own:

Light the darkened sky

And let the aimless see

Something ancient stirred in the air, something older than the earth, older than the Sun, something that made Varian's blood burn. It was a calling, a cry of zeal, an anthem of dominance and control. A scream like a banshee rippled through the air, threatening to scar their eardrums. Green light blazed across the ceiling overhead, followed by a bloom of red. Martin shouted something, but Varian didn't listen. The black rocks were shooting up now, bending and conforming around them, flattening in wide arcs and melding into a solid dome. All light was shut out, and blackness consumed them like pitch.

Silence.

Then a massive boom shook the water beneath them, and the rock dome blossomed with blue light. Violet bled into the blue, dancing across in arcs of veined lightning. Martin shouted, tucking his head low enough that his hair got soaked. Reality seemed to warp and bend around them, rippling in ethereal sheets – a glimpse of the plane the phantom resided in. Freezing cold, boiling hot, then numb to the core. Varian could only watch and stare, his heart frozen in his chest as the ground beneath his feet roared.

What have you done?

Suddenly, he felt like he was suffocating, too burdened by the blindness, the unknown. The moon was gone, the Sun was dead. A demon's face blazed across his vision, sneering and snarling savage sorceries in sordid soliloquies of sorrow and supremacy. It was too much, too little. He needed the Sun, he needed the open air. The dark was no place for him, another box of prison bars separating him from the rest of the world. But he couldn't see. He didn't know where the night stopped and the dawn began.

The moon was gone, and he was alone. Again. The rock cold on his knees, kneeling before the blinding amber. He tried to remember his father's voice. He couldn't.

Then, a pinpoint of light bled through the black, a red spark that shimmered and shone. A star. He reached for it, desperate to force the rocks away. They refused to respond, a wall that he couldn't break through. Something weighed heavily on his back, tugging at him, threatening to pull him down into the dark.

The axe. He reached behind him, his hand finding the weapon's grip. It was the axe. He hefted it in his hands, the weight of it drawing around him like a string. He hauled back and swung into the dark, praying to shatter the oblivion. There was a sound like glass, a ringing bell, and the black dome around them shattered into fragments. Out into the chamber's damp embrace once more, reality engulfed him in its painful grip, his disorientation dissolving.

Shay.

Martin was there, gasping for breath. They dragged themselves to their feet, faltering on their toes as the ceiling above them started to crumble. Large chunks of granite cracked and fell, sending violent splashes bursting across their faces as they searched.

Where was she?

There was no sign of the phantom, though the acrid smell of smoke tinged their noses. The air was thin, and the boys found it difficult to breathe as they dodged falling debris, scrambling in the direction of where they'd last seen the girl. Whatever had been done to rid them of the phantom had made the air too thin. They needed to leave, quickly. She wasn't in the same spot, and the dust made it difficult to search. They finally spotted a pinch of fabric peeking out from around a hunk of rock, and they surged forward to find her in the water on the far side of the chamber, steam hissing from her prone form. She wasn't moving; it looked like she'd been thrown clear into the wall – there was a slight impact in the rock, broken in cracks and crumbles. There was no way of knowing how injured she was until they got out of this place. As Varian knelt to reach her, his left arm went completely numb, and his stomach clenched as every tendon and ligament from his back to his fingers screeched in agony. "No," he gritted, clasping at his shoulder. "Martin," he gasped.

Martin didn't need further prompting. He scooped up Shay and tossed her like a sack of wheat over his back. His face hard as stone, he grabbed Varian's good arm and began to drag him in the direction of the chamber entrance. The stairs felt steeper than before; climbing them was like walking uphill through a mire. Everything around them continued to quake and rumble, dust and gravel coating them in a grey layer.

When they reached the door, Martin's steely gaze cracked. "The phantom's ward! How do we open it?"

Varian didn't have time for wards. He slapped his hand to the wood and used the last vestiges of his strength to order the door aside. The demand was strong enough to summon a slew of black rocks up through the dark, adding further strength to the blast of blue light that shredded the ward – and the wood – to ragged splinters.

They tumbled out onto a sandy field of beach grass, falling to the ground in a tumble. The door splinters faded in grainy sifts, revealing the hole in the earth where they had emerged. Varian had enough consciousness left to recognize a stone slab with the Dark Kingdom's mark on it – the true entrance to the Celestial's chamber – as it slid back into place, grinding itself shut with a sandy thud.

"Varian," he heard Martin speak.

Varian swallowed, trying to keep the bile down. He tried to move from where he lay on the stiff grass, but he didn't have the strength. The sky overhead was dark and depthless, the moon's absence a black hole amidst the dim stars.

"Varian," Martin repeated. "The chantry's gone."

"I noticed," Varian croaked. Talking dialed his nausea up to dangerous levels, so he didn't try to say more.

"We need to get out of here." The guard grunted, then sighed in defeat. "Your idiot girlfriend isn't waking up, and while I know I look like I could, there's no way I can carry both of you."

Varian managed to roll onto his hands and knees – remarkably, the change in position actually helped relieve the urge to retch. It was replaced instead by the reminder that his shoulder was about to split open; the magic that had kept it healed was gone, regressing the wound back to its normal rate of recovery. Since it had been only two weeks, there was still internal damage, and until the moon's return, it was going to stay that way for a while. Even once the natural recovery timeframe was fulfilled, he was certain the injury would ache to some degree for the rest of his life. For now, the best he could do was try not to make it worse.

"A place at the local inn is out of the question," he managed to speak. "And she's not an idiot. Or my girlfriend. She just saved our lives."

"Yeah, because we all have to be big heroes," Martin grumbled guiltily, sitting back on his haunches in the grass. He noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and saw Beth trotting towards them, shaking her head in nervous throws. "Hey, girl!" Martin reached for her, stroking her neck as she bent down to snuffle his hair. "He didn't hurt you, at least."

"Martin."

Martin sighed. "I know I wasn't that much use in there."

"Martin."

"And I don't know how he knew about all that stuff. You know, about my life. But I'd really appreciate if it you –"

"Martin!" Varian shouted, finally gaining the guard's attention. Martin followed Varian's panicked line of sight and immediately lurched to his feet. A door had formed from the sand, solidifying into shape, perched perfectly in the ground. From the other side emerged Tromus, shriveled and decrepit, his face melted on one side. The phantom's ethereal clothes were scorched, fire still licking the tip of his goatee. He looked furious, black claws curled menacingly in Martin's direction.

"It seems we must do this the hard way," he growled through singed teeth.

What happened next was almost too quick for Varian to process. Before he could do anything, he watched his friend get snatched up like a ragdoll and tossed unceremoniously through the door. He heard Martin's cry, quickly engulfed by what lay on the other side, and then the door slammed violently shut. Varian shot up, adrenaline fueling his legs as he sprinted forward. His pain forgotten, he tried to reach the handle, heard the phantom's laughter in his ears. His fingers made contact, but the handle disintegrated at his touch. The door swiftly fell to the ground, a pile of sand once more.

Varian glared up at Tromus. "Let him go!"

The phantom laughed some more, a garish sight in his half-burnt form. "Never," he sneered. "This is the price you pay for your insolence, son of Quirin. You should have given me the axe and your allegiance, but instead you chose this."

"What did you do with him?!"

Tromus' smile sweetened, sickly across his scalded green face. "Wouldn't you like to know," he answered. "But you will not have the privilege of knowing now, will you?"

Varian tried to call upon something, anything inside him to stop it. He had nothing; he was just ordinary Varian now, weak and helpless, defeated first by a princess and now a demon. He sank to his knees as the phantom dissipated, cackles echoing into the distance. Martin's horse was desperate, stomping and nickering agitatedly. She couldn't fully understand what had happened; all she knew was that Martin was gone, and she was left alone.

"What do I do?" Varian whispered, his voice muted by the sound of ocean waves. He was suddenly cold, shivering, still damp from the chamber. He turned around and saw Shay, lying unconscious in the grass. The adrenaline was fading, his body responding like molasses as he crawled over to her. He managed to shift her shakily into his lap, cradling her as the tears started to fall. "Wake up," he begged, burying his face in her neck. "Please."

But Shay didn't stir. Beth settled down, snuffling somberly as she hung her head. Varian could still hear the ocean – its lulling sound would have been soothing, but he was too distressed to heed it. Maybe Caius was right. Maybe magic really was just an evil thing. Varian knew there had to be some way forward, some way to fix all this. He refused to give up, to return home empty-handed with Martin trapped behind some phantom's door. The idea of it was too horrible to imagine. No, he had come too far to give up now. But what could he do?

Then he heard something else, or rather, he felt something. It nudged at the corner of his awareness, and he slowly looked up to see. Through his tears, he saw that the phantom's door had reappeared. Red sparks blinked and danced around its edges, snapping little bits of sand into glass beads on the ground.

Varian felt hope resurge in his veins. "Shay, did you –" He looked down at Shay, expecting to see her eyes open. But she still hadn't moved, didn't even twitch. Varian looked up at the door again. He knew that somehow, Shay's magic was responsible for its return, but he didn't know how she had done it, or if it had even been done on purpose. He didn't know where the door would lead, what was on the other side. All he knew was that Martin was behind it. He had to go inside, to find him and bring him back.

"But I can't just leave you here," he whispered down at her. By morning, others in the town were bound to notice that something had happened. He had until then to bring Martin back. He felt Beth carefully approach, hesitating near his shoulder before sniffing at his hair. He reached carefully up to her; she flinched at his touch before letting him stroke her mane. His shoulder was useless, his left arm limp and barely movable. "I don't know how long I'll be," he told her, even though he knew she wouldn't completely understand. "But I have to get Martin." He settled Shay back down into the grass and stood; Beth allowed him to lean on her when his knees threatened to give out. "Will you stay here with her, until I get back?"

Beth tossed her head, then leaned down to nudge Shay's shoulder. Slowly, carefully, she settled herself down, shielding the girl from view. She kept her head up, watchfully eyeing Varian as he checked his items; he knew it was a risk to bring Creighton's axe with him, but it was just as risky to leave it here. Besides, with the moon gone and no magic of his own, his alchemical supplies and a weapon he barely knew how to use were the best options he had. He made sure Spellbane was still hidden on Beth's saddle before stepping forward towards the door. He reached for the handle once more, and this time it didn't disappear. He sucked in a deep breath. He knew he was exhausted, going in blind, leaving one of the only friends he had unconscious on the far side of a seedy harbor town…but there was nothing more he could do.

He exhaled, tugged the door open, and stepped inside.